Her Dark Wings
by kaileena7
Summary: A black swan spreads her dark wings under the light of a half-moon.  Banshee shrieks echo through the night.  In the end, we are all some kind of monster.


A hundred mirror shards lay scattered across the floor, their twisted reflections making her seethe with fury. It wasn't supposed to be like this, she knew, but the unfair life had cheated her again from what should have been her by birth.

Ever since she was a little girl, she'd always been the ugly duckling to the majestic white swan Rose was. The light of her cousin's wings blinded everyone that laid eyes on her and engulfed them in vicious flames until the world around became nothing more than a half-forgotten memory of a black and white photograph from times long past. Until it was only her, only Rose.

So the little duckling gazed at the stars and plucked at its fluffy grey feathers, and dreamed of growing wings as blinding as were hers. Instead, one evening at twilight, she watched horrified as feathers black as night and heavy as sin grew from her fragile body. She wouldn't be able to fly like this. Even the mirror could not stand the horrifying view so she screamed until her scream became an echo and the echo became a whisper that the silence drowned.

The dreadful black wings crushed the young swan at first. They poisoned her mind like the agony of unreturned love and pressed on her until she fell on the ground. But in a world full of white swans, her dark wings were rare and precious and she soon learned to stand tall preening her slender neck at the other swans. And when she finally spread her wings, their darkness easily consumed the light from Rose's tattered ivory feathers.

Stripping Rose of her light wasn't enough though, not anymore. She demanded the crown of roses from her cousin's head, she craved the golden-haired boy from her embrace. So she danced her cruel dance around him and it wasn't a pas de deux. It was a grim fandango, accompanied by the shrieks of fallen swans and shrouded in the smoke of the inferno that had awoken in her heart. The darkness that had consumed her sent shivers down her spine but she reveled in her new found strength. She couldn't stop dancing this macabre dance.

It was not long until the boy fell at her knees, a rose in his hand. But he offered himself and she did not desire that. She wanted to take the boy and the rose by force, coveted to rip apart all the good things from the world. A banshee shriek echoed throughout the night, the black swan spread angrily her dark wings and wrapped them around the boy named after the stars until the last one of them was extinguished.

It still wasn't enough. An insatiable hunger had started gnawing at her, tearing her from the inside and she knew the time to demand her crown of wilted roses had come. But the white swan would not surrender her territory without a fight. Under the the obsidian sky and the light of a half-moon, her bright feathers glistened with magical light and she pushed mightily again the darkness of the night and the black swan. They croaked and cackled and pecked each other in a hurricane of torn feathers. This was the _real_ danse macabre - the black swan dancing with her white-feathered sister, the heart of darkness repelling the heart of scorching light. The universe turned and in a blink which may have been a second or an eternity, grim clouds hid the moon. The darkness, fueled by the raging madness of a tar-stained heart, overpowered.

Victorious, the black swan lunged for a final attack and plucked the last white feather. She lay by the white swan and running crimsons fingers through tangled scarlet locks she parted her lips and sang. A haunting melody spread through the night with the last feather held tightly in hand conducting the song.

Eyes closing and mind drifting, Lily loosened her grip. A single black feather fell on the floor.

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><p><strong>AN:** So... this is a wee bit strange. It's very unusual for me, but it was a challenging thing to write so I decided to try it. It was inspired by different things, most notably Swan Lake, but also by (really?) some fairy tales (not all of them, swan-related xD) and (despite the banner) very little by the film Black Swan. I didn't mean for it to be interpreted very literally even though the most obvious interpretation is the theme of jealousy/envy that consumes us all at times. But I'd love to hear what you think about it, so if you're feeling like it, I'll be extremely happy that you leave a review and tell me what you think. Thanks for reading!


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